(Closed) What on earth is my FI thinking?!! A $9 invitation!!

So here is my stupid FI’s decision. Well, at least I think he is stupid this time. We went to the design store to print our invitation. (We have to print them in both Chinese and English so we didn’t bother to shop online.) OK, maybe that is my mistake not to check out online vendors first.

Then I picked our invitation. I like the design so I didn’t complain anything about it. Since I am kind of picky, so my FI was happy and decided to order them RIGHT AWAY.

We don’t have a lot of guests, and the min. order is 50 invitations.

Guess what, the total came out to be $450 something. I told him that is way over our budget, THAT IS $9 PER INVITATION! (Original budget is $300, which I thought a little bit too high already).

FI said: “I think it is OK. Time is $$ so I don’t mind to pay more. I don’t want to shop around to waste time. Plus, your photog and videog are over our budget for almost $2k. So don’t argue with me.”

WTH!! Photos and video are something we have for our memories. The invitation? People just want to know : where, when, what time. No one will really care and they will just throw it away in trash cans! Sure, we will keep one for ourselves, but so what?

AHH! So angry about this invitation thing. I got the proof yesterday, which looks nice. I found some mistakes on the English part. But here is my invitation looks like.

I still can’t believe my FI made this decision. Can’t get over with it.

I understand you’re frustrated with him. And I agree that it was not OK for him to make a decision outside of your budget with out consulting him. But I spent over that amount per invite and well over $1,000 on my invitation suite so please don’t just make a blanket statement that it’s “stupid” to do that. The invitations are the first thing your guests will really see that represents your wedding style. So they are important to a lot of people. If it’s an amount you really aren’t comfortable with then you need to continue to talk to him. In my opinion all important financial decisions should be made as a team.

Sorry Moose 1209. I did not mean to say spending good amount of $$ is stupid or offend anyone here. My apology. I do agree the invitation set the tone for the wedding. I am just upset he made the decision right away….

If you just got the proof it sounds like they haven’t been printed yet so there should still be time for you to cancel the order and find another option that works in the budget. Tell your FI that you are willing to spend the time to get a better deal.

@LittleBruin: I totally agree with you. The fact that you’re over budget on a couple other things is NOT a good argument for going over budget in another category–it should be an argument for trying to be under budget in those categories where you think you can cut back (i.e., invitations). His argument doesn’t really make sense.

Since you found someone who can create the bilingual invites, can’t you ask him to see other invites that are less expensive? That way you’re not really wasting time “shopping around” since it’s the same person?

I think you need to just drop it and not argue with him over it. If he’s okay with it and you both liked the design then be done with it. Also, the invitation is a keepsake too. My grandparents have their’s framed from 60 years ago and it hangs in the hallway.

Yeah, it’s probably too late to cancel them if you ordered back in December. I agree that just because you are over budget in one area doesn’t make overspending in another any better (but I don’t think arguing over it will get you anywhere now).

Maybe see if the printer will exchange for a different invite that costs less? This way they are still printing your invites, but maybe you won’t have to pay as much. Or if they have a different shape so that postage is cheaper (those look square and square envelopes usually cost more postage).

If it’s any consolation though, those are really pretty invites. And it could always be worse. When I told my FI that it looks like our DIY invites are going to be about $3/each with postage ($2 without) he started complaining that was too much money!